Too many products, not enough differentiation

The built environment is crowded with choice, how can your product secure a sharper position in your customers’ mind?

The built environment is overcrowded with products all claiming the same features and even the same benefits. Choice, in everything from bricks to fire boards, heat pumps to roofing systems, will only get more competitive, whatever the impact of Brexit. The question is not who will be the winners, but how they will win.

Those products that compete on choice, quality, better customer service, will certainly do better than those competing on price, especially in the long term. But, neither will ever beat the product or brand that is built on insight-driven differentiation. The winner will always have a clearly sharpened point of difference, well communicated.

This may be based on many things, but never price, creativity or quality. Saying you are the best doesn’t work any more and, in any case, everyone else is making the same claim.

Find your difference, prove it, own it, communicate it. Your difference does not have to be unique. It just has to be real, something that can be proven, that can be shown to matter to customers, that nobody else has claimed yet, that you can own before anyone else realises its potential. Finding your difference will probably not be easy, but it will be there.

You may face a losing streak, if you don’t plan a strategy to build a stronger point of difference, now. It is vital that you unlock the power of incisive differentiation to win. If you want a little help along the way, make sure you talk to specialists proven to build sharper brands, in your sector.

Dianne Lucas
Managing Director

About CMDi

CMDi is a strategic marketing consultancy that helps CEOs, Business Leaders and CMOs fast-track visible and sustainable step-change improvement in marketing performance, while strengthening their brand and positioning to ensure they win during the COVID-19 crisis, and in the years ahead.

We exist to help our clients move pre-emptively to seize advantage, or build new strategies to accelerate bounce back at the right time.

Our goal is to help you utilise this time to get your marketing house in order to ensure your organisation is ready for a world filled with unknowns.

More than ever, our unique set of services combining research, strategy and creative are helping organisations adapt and survive by turning strategy into effective action – with speed and certainty.

The agency has over 20 years of complex B2B, built environment and membership organisation experience: sharpening strategy, lifting marketing ROI and guiding transformation.